Episode 237: Aeoniums

Mellie Lewis with her National Collection of Aeonium species and cultivars. Photograph: Jane Perrone.

Subscribe to On The Ledge via Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Player FM, Stitcher, Overcast, RadioPublic and YouTube.

Become a Patron!

Ko-fi donationsSupport Me on Ko-fi

Transcript

Episode 237

Jane Perrone 00:04

This episode is supported by True Leaf Market, sellers of heirloom and organic garden seeds since 1974. We all know keeping your soil in good heart is vital for good harvests. And now is a great time to rehab your garden by growing a cover crop. Cover crops improve soil quality in a sustainable way, boosting biomass and soil bacteria, adding nutrients, attracting beneficial insects, improving soil structure and so much more. To get your free PDF of True Leaf Market's Beginner's Guide to growing cover crops, visit trueleafmarket.com and search for 'cover crop guide' and you can order your cover crops online now at trueleafmarket.com using promo code OTL15 to save 15% on cover crop seeds. That's trueleafmarket.com, enter OTL15 for 15% off cover crops - some restrictions apply, see the show notes for details.

Jane Perrone 01:09

Hello, I'm Jane Perrone and my family got sick of me talking about plants. Fast forward five years. And here we are. It's On The Ledge podcast. This week, we look at the succulent rosettes of the Aeonium family. And I answer not one but two Ficus elastica questions.

Jane Perrone 01:52

Thanks to everyone who donated plants and came to my plant swap jointly with the Plant Rescuer Sarah Gerard Jones. It was a fun event. We were a bit panicky at the start that literally no one was going to turn up and then people did turn up and we ended up with lots of plants. In fact, we had quite a few plants leftover. Those have been sold and given away locally and also have been passed on to another local plant swap where I live so nothing has gone to waste and great news we raised £270 for the World Land Trust, which is a fantastic charity. Check out a link in the show notes if you want to find out more about what they do, but they're saving rainforests around the world which as I am sure you know, is pretty important work.

Jane Perrone 02:02

The other big news for me this week is that the cover of my forthcoming book, Legends of the Leaf is out. It is gorgeous. It features the illustrations that are within by the lovely Helen Entwisle and it's got a black background with a green foil title and a melange of Swiss cheese, plant Sansevieria, Aspidistra, Oxalis and ivy all kind of massing around the title and my name and the subtitle. So I think it looks fab, but I hope you agree. I'll put a link in the show notes for you to go and check that out. You can still preorder a copy. I think the supporter list will be closing in the next month or so. So if you haven't pledged it's a good time to do so. You will still be able to buy the book in all the conventional places too. But if you go for this version, you can get a signed copy or you can get a set of postcards of all the illustrations. So there's some great supporter rewards available. And also out today is a new edition of the Plant Ledger, my email newsletter about the UK houseplant scene. You can subscribe to this at Janeperrone.com/ledger and you get a free in depth guide to fungus gnats into the bargain. So if you want all the news from the UK houseplant world, shops opening, shutting new plants, new products, interesting botany stories. This is the place to get it all in one place in your inbox every other Friday.

Jane Perrone 04:26

I have been having great fun in the last couple of weeks travelling around finally getting seriously back into the world of in person interviews. And the first of those interviews is coming up today. It's with Mellie Lewis, who lives in a beautiful village in Shropshire and she is the National Collection holder of Aeoniums, a wonderful genus of plants mainly from the Canary Islands, commonly known as the tree houseleek. There are nearly 700 of these national plant collections based in the UK, Ireland and the Channel Islands. And they're helping to conserve cultivated plants and make sure that species and cultivars are not lost into the mists of time, which as we know does happen. And there's no one better to interview about a particular plant genus than somebody who collects large numbers of them and keeps meticulous records. So, Melly was a brilliant interviewee and I know you're going to love this interview. So in your mind's eye, take yourself to a charming Shropshire village, a very old house with a beautiful conservatory attached, and then we find the lovely Mellie Lewis. We're in your conservatory, it's a box of delights in here. Wow. I mean, it's like a sweet box from my dreams, the tuck shop of succulents here. What a beautiful collection. Oh, I don't know where to start - tell me where this all began...

Mellie Lewis 06:00

Well it began when when I was much younger back in the 1980s. And I was working very part time in a particularly beautiful woodland garden, and the head gardener there had thrown out some plants to make room for his own national collection, actually, which was a collection of trilliums. So he thrown a load of stuff on the compost heap, and anything that lands on that compost heap was up for grabs. I was with another gardener and he picked up this plant. He said, "This looks like a Mellie plant" and throws it in my general direction. And he was right - I had never seen anything like it before. So it was sort of it was obviously a succulent. But it was like a little tree, and it seemed to smile at me. And it also made me think of sort of dinosaurs and other worldly things. So that came home with me - potted it up, popped into my plant conservatory, and I've not been without an Aeonium ever since.

Jane Perrone 07:06

Well, I can tell.it's kind of exploded from there from this amazing collection. So what plant was that then? Do you remember what that actually was?

Mellie Lewis 07:15

Yeah, it took several trips, because back then obviously, we didn't have the internet. So I had to keep going to the library. And eventually I narrowed it down to Aeonium arboreum. And I found that in a cactus book, but it took quite a few weeks of going through different, you know, books on plants, because, you know, nothing much was written about them then, they were not very well known.

Jane Perrone 07:43

I think they've come a bit more to the fore in popularity these days. I think most of us may be - the sort of number one Aeonium that we might have seen is 'Schwarzkopf', perhaps that's probably the one that catches people's eye first. But what I'm sensing from looking at this beautiful collection is just the range of different leaf sizes, colours and shapes.

Mellie Lewis 08:09

Well 'Schwarzkopf' really was the forerunner for Aeoniums in cultivation. So that was found by German gentleman in a Dutch garden centre in somewhere in the 1950s. And he put that plant into cultivation. It found its way to America. And then a chap called Jack Catlin, he then cross bred 'Schwarzkopf' with lots of other species, and came up with lots of cultivars which are popular today. So yeah, 'Schwarzkopf' is probably the forerunner of Aeoniums in cultivation. And it's a gorgeous Aeonium itself. It's really easy. It's really great if you want to start off, becauseit's less fussy, it's easy to grow.

Jane Perrone 09:02

Well, that's good to know. That's a good starting point. And it does have those amazing, really dark purple leaves which are absolutely stunning. That said, though, there are lots of things here that I have never seen before. I'm looking around and wondering whether when people come into this collection, there's a particular plant that draws people's eye and people tend to flock around. I mean, this is gorgeous. I'm looking down at this...

Mellie Lewis 09:31

That has probably got its origins with 'Schwarzkopf' it's called 'Big Bang'. And basically, it's kind of a reverting plant. So it was once purple, but it's reverting back to green. So it has these sort of splashes of green colour and starry sort of sparkles of green. So it's really interesting. It's just really a freak of nature.

Jane Perrone 09:55

I love that. Yeah. And 'Big Bang' that is the perfect name.

Mellie Lewis 09:59

It does look like an explosion, doesn't it? Yeah, this is a very interesting plant. This is Aeonium arboreum 'Albovariegatum'. It's a little treelike Aeonium. So it has lots of little branches off and these beautiful rosettes of cream and lime green, sometimes almost white, and researching Aeoniums, I found this in the Duchess of Beaufort's collection, and dated 1699. So probably one of the earliest recordings back in the UK of an Aeonium. And basically, it was a sport from a plant that she'd been given from Portugal. She just snapped a bit off and away it went. So yeah, I'm probably one of the oldest Aeoniums, and I think it's really beautiful. A lot of people are drawn to that.

Jane Perrone 11:00

I love your banner here, because it gives you a really good indication of how this plant grows. Tell me a bit about this plant grows in the wild,

Mellie Lewis 11:10

Well, a lot of the Aeoniums that we know have come from the Canary Islands. The Canary Islands are a beautiful set of volcanic islands off the west coast of Africa. And basically, they are just big volcanoes, each island. And it's really interesting because each island has its own species. And each level of the island as you go higher and higher, you get different spaces, which will adapted to that unique environment at that level. So people tend to think of Aeoniums as being home lovers in dry arid areas. Yes, some are. But some grow in the laurel cloud forests and in the pine forests quite high up. And I used to be in a much colder, wetter conditions: sometimes dry, but with a lot of moisture in the air.

Jane Perrone 11:10

Oh, that's fascinating. I'd love to go to the Canary Islands in search of Ionians. Is their habitat threatened, are they struggling now?

Mellie Lewis 12:22

It's extremely threatened. In fact, I think Aeoniums are one of the most threatened plants on the planet. And it's something that I'm really keen on talking about because it upsets me greatly. You know, I wish the Spanish government would do a little bit more to help protect them.

Jane Perrone 12:43

I'm seeing an enormous flower spike on this banner, which is it's reminding me of Sempervivum flowers, the same kind of style of flower: absolutely massed with flowers for pollinators to enjoy. This is a plant that gives this one big display though. Another monocarpic plant - we seem to have been talking about a lot of monocarpic plants on the podcast.

Mellie Lewis 13:10

Yeah, yeah, that's right. And they are closely related to Sempervivum. So you're right. Yeah. So once they flowered, that, is it. But what you're left with is just millions of tiny little seeds that get dispersed. And there you go again.

Jane Perrone 13:26

Yeah, that's so interesting. I was reading something about monocarpic plant saying that they often live in, what was the word they used? Sort of unstable habitats, and that's why they do this approach, which would make sense you get millions of seeds up to flower. Yeah. And then those loads of seedlings can then be dispersed. Some are going to make it, some are not.

Mellie Lewis 13:48

Yeah, yeah. So some are dispersed on the wind. There's little geckos that run around the plant looking for a meal, and seeds get caught on their little feet. So they get dispersed that way, and of couse birds ...

Jane Perrone 14:04

Oh, that's glorious. What does it mean to be a National Collection holder? In terms of what you have to do? You do you have to maintain a certain number of plants of each species and cultivar? .

Mellie Lewis 14:19

Yes. It's good to have three of each plant. There are pests and diseases, you can get the watering wrong, especially with the British weather. We've just had that horrendous heatwave. And then here in Shropshire, we had an absolute deluge of rain which killed a lot of my plants off, really, so yeah, you have to have backups. And each plant has its own little registration number, so I can easily look them up and identify them and see where I am with my collection.

Jane Perrone 14:55 When you're cultivating these plants, I mean, I can see that you've got a range of terracotta pots and plastic pots here and we're inside this light airy conservatory. What's your top advice for anyone who's perhaps had an Aeonium in the past and hasn't, hasn't made it?

Mellie Lewis 15:14

Well, they do like to be outside during the summer months. So although they're largely a houseplant, June, July and August, pop it outside, it will love it. They're not frost hardy, so you have to bring them in. And then it's getting the watering right, really, and getting their growing medium right. So I use 50% grit, 50% compost, and nice peat-free compost. And if we're in hot weather, I don't water because in their own natural environment, in the heat, they would just go into a dormancy. So don't water them in in strong hot weather. When things start to cool down a bit, put them in the shade and just start spraying them and trickling a little bit of water in. Don't give them a deluge because if you try and wake them up by doing that, that can rot them off. So just gently start that watering again. And then then suddenly they'll wake up soon as the weather starts cooling off this time of year. You can see that they're waking up like in this one, you can see that that although it's a purple rosette, there's a lot of green in the middle. And that's because it's just a little bit of a growing spurt.

Jane Perrone 16:34

It is interesting about the watering because I think a lot of people think oh my gosh, it's really hot, they need tonnes of water now. And obviously that might be a key mistake to make.

Jane Perrone 16:43

Oh, absolutely, yes. I mean, they're born survivors, they can manage without the water they can manage for a long, long time. In the Canary Islands, they will go months without being watered. In the UK, it's a little bit different - they don't have that long period of dormancy, but like I say if we've had a really hard spell of dry weather is the best not to give them anything to drink.

Jane Perrone 17:13

Do you prefer the terracotta pots you've got a lot of plants in terracotta here do you find that's better for keeping the roots from getting too waterlogged?

Mellie Lewis 17:22

I like to pots for a couple of reasons one, I only tend to be a bit top heavy. So terracotta pots are a bit heavier, it helps you know balance the plant a bit better. And also the Aeonium roots like to Adil themselves to the to the terracotta. So in the wild you see them growing on the roofs of houses which have got terracotta slates on the roof. So they just like it.

Jane Perrone 17:52

It's a fantastic display. I think some people might also be caught out by worrying about the shape of these plants and what they need to do whether their plant gets, they consider their plants getting too tall or maybe leaning over to one side.

Mellie Lewis 18:09

'Schwarzkopf' in particular, grows very tall and leggy. And I get this question a lot. What do I do with it, you know, too big and people put them in the garage over the winter and then they go green and then they collapse and die. So the best thing to do really is if your plants getting too tall to leggy is to chop it. So chop off the rosette, put that to one side, let the wound callus over and then pop it into a really dry greasy mix. And within a couple of weeks it will have roots and then you can start watering it and either put it on or leave it in what you've you've put it into root and and then you've got a new plant. The stalk that you left with from where you chopped off that rosette should send out some fresh little rosette. They start with a little pinprick you'll see and then away they go.

Jane Perrone 19:07

And indeed you've ended up with these wonderful sort of fireworks of of the rosettes coming out on top which is absolutely amazing.

Jane Perrone 19:22

We'll be back with Mellie Lewis and more Aeonium chat shortly. But now it's time for question of the week and it's a Ficus doubleheader - two figs for the price of one. The first one came in on the old Instagram today from a chap called Matt and it was the plant equivalent of a 999 call and it concerns a new rubber plant Ficus elastica and it's starting to bend dramatically. It's drooped. A droopy Ficus is not a desirable look, is it, so Matt's wondering what to do. The soil is drying out about one and a half centimetres deep before watering, and there's no excess water in the pot. It's just drooping. And Matt doesn't know what to do.

Jane Perrone 20:10

It's always difficult when you've got a new plant and you bring it home because you just don't know what's been happening to it before you got your hands on it. Has it been in a freezing cold room? Has it been knocked? Has it been waiting for months in low light conditions? Who knows? You have really no clue. So particularly if you're buying it from a grower that you're not that familiar with or from a shop. You're coming in, they're completely blind.

Jane Perrone 20:45

But what I told Matt to do is to go to the source of all knowledge when it comes to your plants, of course, shout out the answer, what am I going to tell Matt to do? Do you know? Yeah you do, check the roots. So the best thing to do if your plant is drooping after purchase is have a good old look at those roots. Don't be afraid to make a mess on your floor. Get yourself a little dustpan and brush or a tarp or something so that you're ready for the mess and get that plant out of its pot. Check those roots. And this will give you a great insight into what's really going on.

Jane Perrone 21:24

Now I think there's two paths here, either path one, we've got Matt on parts of the plant and discovers that actually that rootball is bone dry at the centre. I don't know how Matt's been watering, but it may well be that he's been trickling some water onto the top of the soil. And really, that hasn't been penetrating that whole root ball. And as a result, the plant which has been sitting in a nursery where probably it's been sitting on a bench where the watering system has been a flooding system, so the computer-controlled mechanism hits a certain time of day, water floods the bench, the plant sucks up lots of moisture from below, and then the excess water drains away. That's usually how plants in really big production nurseries are watered, which means that the bottom section of the root ball gets really wet. So if you start trickling water on top, you're only going to encourage roots to grow at the very surface of the soil. And there probably aren't any roots there right now. So that may well be a good reason why mats plant is drooping. It's just not getting moisture in the place where it needs to get moisture. The other option, of course, is that the whole thing is actually waterlogged. Good call Matt to check that there's not water sitting in the outer cache pot.

Jane Perrone 22:42

But really you can't tell what's happening in that root ball. Could it be completely waterlogged and soaking in which case the root rot is already set in, the plant is unable then to draw water up to support its growth and therefore, it wilts. So those are the two scenarios. I've asked Matt to go and have a look and see what he can find and report back I'm gonna bet - my bet would be that it's scenario one. The reason I'm betting on that is because generally, Ficus elastica is probably gonna be potted in a substrate that's going to become hydrophobic when it's dry. So that could either be coir, or peat or a mixture thereof. And once those substrates become dry, they are hydrophobic, so they just repel water and they're hard to properly rewet.

Jane Perrone 23:33

So that is what I suspect Matt's facing. The solution Matt is just to dump that whole pot in a bucket of water for an hour or two, until you've checked that the water has totally penetrated that root ball and in the longer term you might want to repot in a slightly more airy potting mix so that the plant is easier to water and keep it the right level of moisture.

Jane Perrone 23:56

Ficus question two is a little bit different. It comes from Grant and Grant's eyecatching subject line was "help! mutant Ficus elastica" and Grant from I don't have to say this Boise Idaho - I don't know how to pronounce that. Anyway, he's in Idaho, has got this plant and it's a variegated rubber plant, Ficus elastica. Same species, again, was found at a local market and seems to have some kind of variegation that grant hasn't seen before. It's kind of a green on green effect that some areas of the leaf the outer areas of the leaf are dark green and then the inner areas have got paler green, but in that same variegation pattern that you'll recognise from the variegated cultivar 'Tineke', just without the cream parts that you would be used to seeing.

Jane Perrone 24:56

So Grant wants to know what this is - what has Grant stumbled upon? And Grant is hoping that this is some new and exciting variety and he's thinking ahead, because then he'd like to give it an outlandish name like 'Gronk' or 'Green Shadow'. I think I'm about to burst your bubble grant. I suspect that this is just a reverted or semi reverted 'Tineke'. So the cream variegation has gone and you're left with the two different levels of green. I think that's probably what's going on rather than any kind of new cultivar looking at the plants around it. It's definitely worth propagating that reverted stem air layering is one possible way to do that and get a separate plant with that variegation. Because this variation is only occurring on a single stem. I don't know if that's because the plant is multi stem or because there's multiple plants in the same pot. But either way you could propagate and keep that variegation going. I suspect, as I say it's a reverted plant. But it could be an interesting, certainly an interesting specimen to keep and keep an eye on and yeah, it's attractive. It is something different. But I don't think it's any great new innovation Grant. I'm sorry about that.

Jane Perrone 26:16

And it's worth bearing in mind that of course, if it is a reverted cream varigated plant, you may find that the cream returns in some of the new leaves you get the regular typical look, or indeed that the plant gets even greener and just turns playing green eventually. reversion is a tricky thing. We don't really know the full reasons why it happens. And there could be a lot of different factors involved. But it's a really interesting one. Thanks for sending this Grant and keep me posted on what happens with your Gronk that's the name I'd go for if I was you. That's all for question of the week if you've got a question for On The Ledge, drop me a line to on the ledgepodcast@gmail.com.

Jane Perrone 27:07

Dare we mention pests. I mean, the what are the few Aeoniums I've had have had problems with mealy bugs - not going to lie. Yeah, this must be the bane of your life.

Mellie Lewis 27:15

It is. Mealy bugs are horrible little things because they can hide very well. They hide underneath the rosette and slowly Trump away but they are quite easy to get rid of I use finger and thumb a lot and squidge them. You can spray them if if you're into using pesticides. But yeah, they're fairly easy to get rid of. It's just a case of being vigilant and checking your rosettes quite often.

Mellie Lewis 27:49

Not so easy to get rid of is vine weevil. Or the evil weevil as we call it. They are in the soil, you don't know that they're in there. There's no evidence of them in there. And what they do is chomp away at the Aeonium roots and one day your Aeonium looks really good. And then I'll look at it and think hmm you don't look so happy. Oh no, I know what's going on here. You empty it out and you find that all that you're left with really is the stalk inside the soil and inside the stalk are these little white grubs, which again, they get fit to the robins round here.

Jane Perrone 28:30

Well at least somebodys benefiting.

Mellie Lewis 28:32

Somebody benefits, yes.

Jane Perrone 28:34

They are rough aren't they?

Mellie Lewis 28:35

They are such a pest. Anyway, luckily, Aeoniums are quite easy to reroute. So chop off the dead bit and threw away that soil because I don't know whether the eggs in that soil or vine weevil larvae. And so give them fresh soil and start them off again. The other pest is tortrix moth caterpillar, so you get a little green caterpillar and it's really crafty. It eats away at the rosette and it can get to the stalk from the rosette end and chomp away and you try and catch this little green caterpillar and it is really fast. It moves really quickly and it's really good at hiding. So yeah, another naughty little pest that gets fed to the robin if I can.

Jane Perrone 29:35

Yeah, I think I've had experiences with those too. And you're right, they are surprisingly fast. You think how can I be out run by a little caterpillar but it does happen. I mean, going back to the vine weevil I guess the fact that you might be moving them outside in the summer adds to that risk because you know there are there are a garden pess. I know I've got them in my garden. You can treat them with biological controls and things but they seem To be endemic and hard to get rid of permanently. And it's that moment where you you sort of like you go to the rosette, and then you realise it just lifts clean away. You think 'what's happened'?!

Mellie Lewis 30:12

Yeah, absolutely. You can go out - on winter evenings, I come in here with the torch. And surprisingly I can squidge quite a lot of vine weevil that way.

Jane Perrone 30:24

The adults presumably?

Mellie Lewis 30:26

That's the adults that ares currying around looking for another plant to destroy so yeah, they they get cut that way by me. But yeah, they're just part of Aeonium growing. I have tried the nematodes but unfortunately, you need to drench the plant. And it's not always a suitable time.

Jane Perrone 30:49

Of course - the right time to do that.

Mellie Lewis 30:53

It's not always a winner for me.

Jane Perrone 30:54

No, that's right. I think that is the problem those Bilu logical controllers is to do with how moist the soil isn't. It really does have to be evenly moist. If you kill your plant anyway. It's just pointless. Yeah. Yeah, but that's an interesting one. But yeah, they've got very specific tastes. Haven't they bind weevils? I find heucheras in the garden, they also really like but yeah, when they get their teeth into something you know about it?

Mellie Lewis 31:21

Absolutely. Yeah.

Jane Perrone 31:23

But as you say, the birds love those little C shaped grubs. Somebody does benefit out of it.

Mellie Lewis 31:30

Yeah, in the winter, there's a little Robin that will literally sit outside the door going 'feed me'.

Jane Perrone 31:35

So lovely. Well, it's such a lovely setting here. You've got such a gorgeous garden. And when you have people to visit for open days and things, do you find that you get any other particular questions about people people always have about earnings, anything that people desperately want to know?

Mellie Lewis 31:54

I think the main question is how to propagate them. And what people usually want to know and about what soil medium to put them in. People worry about the watering and rightly so is a little bit tricky, a little bit easier for people on the south coast because they can leave them out longer in the sunshine. But yeah, I think those are the main main questions.

Mellie Lewis 32:23

There are some new varieties which have come in from Korea and China, where they've taken cultivars and variegated them via a process which I am not really privy to. It's a little bit disappointing because they've renamed plants that are already in cultivation. So instead of saying 'Blushing Beauty variegated', they've called them another lane, like 'Verna', or, you know, it's a bit confusing. So that quite often confuses the public because they'll say, Well, I've got this new new plant called Yanning. And you go, yes, that's, you know, Blushing Beauty variegated? No, no, it's not. It's yawning. No, right. So that takes a little bit of explanation. But they are very beautiful. And the variations are really nice from plant to plant. I just wish they'd have stuck with the original cultivars.

Jane Perrone 33:30

And how do you handle the plants over over the wintertime? Is it like other succulents where you're just going to cut off watering from sort of November to March?

Mellie Lewis 33:40

I do tend to restrict the watering over the darker months. So December, November, December, January, February. But once we get to towards the end of February, I get the more liquid water and a little bit of a feed and that kind of kick starts them again. Usually, by that time, they've dropped a lot of the lower leaves, and they're looking really quite yukky. And they are glad of that feed and the drop of water. And they start springing back into life. And by the time the last frosts have gone, they're ready to go out and they're looking gorgeous again.

Jane Perrone 34:18

Do you have any kind of heating in here or is it just a question of keeping them frost free?

Mellie Lewis 34:22

Well, originally, we've got underfloor heating in here, but I found that actually that was a little bit too warm for them. When of the key things, Jane, is ventilation, you can't have them in a steamy room. They won't like that at all. It'll rot off the rosettes. So although we've got the heating turned almost off in it just keeps him above freezing. And I've usually got a window open and unless it's really really cold, then I'll go into the winter but yeah, so ventilation the most important thing really?

Jane Perrone 35:00

Yes, absolutely. Well, as you say, you've just got to think about that native environment. They're not they're not getting a living in a humid place, which is obviously the key factor. Well, I'm just looking around. Are there any particular favourites in here that you want to tell me about? I mean, there's a couple of real sort of large showstoppers. Like this 'Pomegranate' here.

Mellie Lewis 35:22

Yes.

Jane Perrone 35:24

That's like a sea monster.

Mellie Lewis 35:27

It's beautiful. So it has these sort of army tentacles, doesn't it? Witha big rosette on the end, and these lovely wavy leaves. That's because one of its parents is Aeonium undulatum. Some called undulatum because of the wavy leaves. And that is a big plant. So yeah, that's got that parentage, so it's mimicking that. But it's a bit of a showstopper. Isn't it? One of my favourites.

Jane Perrone 35:57

That's absolutely gorgeous. I'm a bit of a sucker clearly for these stripy ones as well.

Mellie Lewis 36:02

'Big Bang' is rather spectacular isn't it?.

Jane Perrone 36:08

Moving moving further in. I noticed a few non Aeoniums here but that's always gonna happen. I guess.

Mellie Lewis 36:16

I am a sucker for succulents.

Jane Perrone 36:20

I think that's allowed!

Mellie Lewis 36:21

I have reduced - I've got rid of most of my cacti sadly, because of lack of space.

Jane Perrone 36:27

Yes, of course.

Mellie Lewis 36:29

I do love the species that are very dear and close to my heart. So I really do like growing them. And one of my favourite spaces is nobile here. But these great big fat juicy leaves. And it's it's flowering spike has really beautiful brick red flowers, which is slightly different because usually mostly the flowers either yellow or pink or white. But they are brick red.

Jane Perrone 37:03

That's a real chonk as my children would say. A beautiful plant!

Mellie Lewis 37:08

Yeah. It doesn't tend to branch off or anything. You just get this one big, juicy rosette.

Jane Perrone 37:17

Yeah, it's a really beautiful collection. And I mean, do you feel the pressure of trying to make sure that you know, you feel as the collection holder that you're having to kind of get every cultivar? Are there lots of new cultivars coming?

Mellie Lewis 37:31

Yeah. Yes. I do feel like there's quite a bit of pressure on me to to keep the standard high. And to you know, as soon as I'm aware of that there's another cultivar out there, or maybe an interspecific hybrid, which is a baby of two species. I am like, oh I must get that.

Jane Perrone 37:52

Do people send you things? Do you find that people get hold of plants in different ways?

Mellie Lewis 37:57

I've got some really lovely succulent friends who would share. They send me things, I send them, you know, and we help each other out. I'm very, very lucky. Yeah.

Jane Perrone 38:08

But isn't the one that's half the joys of the world of succulents and cacti is how generous people are. But yeah, well, it's an absolutely gorgeous collection. Is there anything else you wanted to tell me or show me I'm just I'm, I'm slightly in awe of all the different colours and leaf combinations. I'm thinking that if I was an artist - and I'm not - that these would be beautiful to paint. I mean that 'Mardi Gras' at the top there, the amazing, red margined leaves, and then the new growth with the cream.

Mellie Lewis 38:41

It is a particularly beautiful plant. That came over from America about 10 years ago. And I think it was the sort of forerunner for all these other sort of variegated, beautiful combinations. Yeah, it is gorgeous. Yeah, I think if I could paint I would certainly start by painting a 'Mardi Gras'.

Jane Perrone 39:06

Yeah, it's really, really fantastic. Well, thank you so much for sharing your collection with me. It's a delight to see all these beautiful plants and I'm going to go back and check my I think, I think the one I have which is had terrible mealy bug problem is this 'Kiwi'. Yeah, I'm gonna go give it a good look.

Mellie Lewis 39:25

You need to check under the rosettes.

Jane Perrone 39:27 I think that's where I've been going wrong. I haven't been curious enough.

Mellie Lewis 39:33

That's where they hide.

Jane Perrone 39:36

But they're so tough. I mean, I think it might get to the point where I just end up chopping everything back completely, and giving it a restart, but at least you can do that with these plants.

Mellie Lewis 39:46

Yes. Yeah. I mean, if you chop off a rosette and it has got mealy bug, just give it a soak in some warm, soapy water. And that should get rid of them.

Jane Perrone 39:58

You've got to admire mealy bugs really, they are absolutely tenacious. I mean, they're very good at what they do.

Mellie Lewis 40:05

I mean, I just don't know how they get there.

Mellie Lewis 40:07

I know. It's weird, isn't it one day you think there's nothing there and the next minute they're just pottering about.

Mellie Lewis 40:14

Their llittle crustacean, fluffy white horribleness.

Jane Perrone 40:18

I know. I didn't really realise until a while ago when I did an episode on them that you know, they're kind of like a scale insect underneath all that fluff And if you sort of dissolve them in alcohol, you see that scale, you'll realise oh, yeah, that's what it actually is. They are, as I say, something we all have to deal with.

Mellie Lewis 40:40

I think they are a relative of the cochineal beetle which are used for red dye and sweeties and jellies.

Jane Perrone 40:46

I wish that they were that useful, but they just come to test our patience. Yeah. But I guess at least it encourages you to examine your plants.

Mellie Lewis 40:59

It does. Yes.

Jane Perrone 41:02

Maybe if you're looking for mealy bugs, you might spot other problems at the same time.

Mellie Lewis 41:06

True, and one of the things I find fascinating about Aeoniums is the cilia around the leaf margin. So quite often, when I've been looking for mealy bugs and pests, and i go ooooh, look at the look at those little eyelashes on that plant. They're so beautiful. And I'd like to take photographs of those, and they're really interesting structures. And they're a good way of identifying plants as well within the within genus, because the each one has got a different sort of set of cilia.

Jane Perrone 41:37

Do you have to be a little bit careful with touching the leaves in terms of some of them having, you know, damaging the surface? Or are they and I'm just thinking of other succulents where they've got that more of that farina type look.

Mellie Lewis 41:50

No. Generally, they're pretty tough. Yeah, you can leave a fingerprint on some of them, but no, they're fine.

Jane Perrone 42:01

Yeah, well, they're absolutely beautiful. Thank you so much for sharing them with me. It's been a tonic my eyes, seeing all these beautiful succulents. So thank you so much.

Jane Perrone 42:18

Thanks so much to Mellie Lewis for giving me a delightful tour of her collection. And do visit the show notes as always to see beautiful pictures of that 'Mardi Gras', 'Pomegranate', and the rest of her wonderful collection. And if you're in the UK, Mellie does hold the occasional open day to and visits by arrangement. So find out more about that in her National Collection link which is also at Janeperrone.com. And if you're a Patreon subscriber at the Ledge End and Superfan level, you can go and listen to an extra chunk of chat where we talk about growing Aeoniums from seed and also some hybridising chat... Semponiums anyone? Also in that Extra Leaf , I talk about three plants that I got in the plant swap, one was a part of the swap. and the other two came from a very special plant collector who's been amazingly generous and you go find out about those rare aroids in An Extra Leaf, intriguing, I know.

Jane Perrone 43:27

And don't forget to join me every Tuesday evening. 9pm UK time that's 4pm Eastern Standard Time. Houseplant hour happens over on Twitter. It's hosted either by me or by the houseplants guru Lisa Eldridge Steinkopf, and we love to have you there sharing your plants, expertise, chat, and tears of joy and sadness when you find things go right or wrong with your plant collections. Just follow @houseplanthour. And @janeperrone to get involved. That's all for this week's show. I will be back next Friday. Until then, bye.

Jane Perrone 44:13

The music you heard in this episode was Roll Jordan Roll by The Joy Drops, The Road We Used to Travel When We Were Young by Komiku and Whistle by BenJamin Banger. The ad music was Whistling Rufus by the Heftone Banjo Orchestra. All Tracks are licenced under Creative Commons. Visit the show notes for details.

I find out about the genus of succulents known as Aeoniums with National Collection holder Mellie Lewis, and answer two Ficus questions.

Patreon subscribers at the Ledge End and Superfan level can hear more chat with Mellie discussing hybridisation and growing from seed in An Extra Leaf 98.

A few housekeeping notes…

  • Last Saturday’s plant swap run jointly with Sarah Gerrard-Jones raised £270 for the World Land Trust - thanks to everyone who came, bought and swapped!

  • Subscribe to my UK houseplant newsletter The Plant Ledger now and get a free in-depth to fungus gnats.

  • The cover of my forthcoming book Legends of the Leaf has been unveiled… check it out here or scroll down for details.

Photograph: Jane Perrone.

Check out the notes below as you listen…

Photograph: Jane Perrone

  • This week’s guest Mellie Lewis lives in Shropshire in the UK and is National Collection holder of Aeonium species and cultivars (open by appointment only). Mellie’s excellent guide to Aeoniums and their care is available as a PDF download here.

  • Aeoniums are a genus of succulents in the stonecrop family (Crassulaceae) that are native to the Canary Islands and parts of East Africa. Their habitats are extremely threatehed. Each island of the Canaries has its own species, and at different altitudes you will find species adapted to those conditions: some grow in pine forests and cloud forests at high altitude.

  • Aeoniums are monocarpic - they flower once then die.

  • Mellie started growing Aeoniums in the 1980s - her first plant was Aeonium arboreum.

  • Aeonium ‘Schwartzkopf’ is probably the best known of the genus. It was found in a Dtuch garden centre in the 1950s. American breeder Jack Catlin crossed it with other species, producing lots of cultivars we know today.

  • One vultivar which is probably bred from Schwartzkopf is Aeonium ‘Big Bang’.

  • Mellie found A. arboreum ‘Albovariegatum’ is a treelike Aeonium with rosettes of cream and lime green. During her research, Mellie discovered this in the Duchess of Beaufort’s collection, dated 1699, making it one of the oldest Aeoniums.

  • Aeoniums like to be put outside in the summer months, but they are not frost hardy so must be brought inside to a frost free place in winter.

  • Mellie pots her plants 50% grit, 50% peat free compost and prefers terracotta pots, which allow air to reach the roots and are heavy, preventing larger, top-heavy plants from toppling over. Terracotta also emulates how Aeoniums grow in the wild, where they attach to terracotta roof tiles.

  • Don’t water Aeoniums in really hot weather. Once things start to cool down, move them into the shade and gradually start misting and watering them, as they can rot if suddenly given a lot of water in one go.

  • Some Aeoniums get tall leggy, especially if not given enough light. The best solution is to chop off the rosette, let the wound callus over, then pot it into a gritty mix to root. The stalk left behind should resprout.

  • The main pests suffered by Aeoniums in the UK are mealy bugs, vine weevil and tortrix moth caterpillar: of the three, Mellie finds vine weevil harder to eradicate as they damage the plants’ roots. Plants can be badly damaged: in that scenario, chop off the rosettes, re-root them and dispose of the potting soil.

  • Aeoniums usually drop leaves during winter when they should be kept dry and cool but frost free: the most important factor is good ventilation. Mellie starts watering and feeding again in late February.

  • Aeonium ‘Pomegranate’ has wavy leaves, because one of its parents is A. undulatum.

  • One of Mellie’s favourite species is A. nobile which has brick red flowers - Aeonium flowers are usually yellow, pink or white.

  • Aeonium ‘Mardi Gras’ was one of my favourites from Mellie’s collection. My Aeonium with mealy bug is ‘Kiwi’.

  • The eyelash-like cilia around the leaf margins are a good way of identifying Aeoniums.

  • Scroll down for more Aeonium images: click to enlarge photographs. All images copyright Jane Perrone.

Grant’s mystery Ficus elastica.

QUESTION OF THE WEEK

A Ficus double-header this week. Mat got in touch about a newly-purchased Ficus elastica (rubber plant) that has begun to droop dramatically. I suggested the problem lay at root level - either very dry soil, or waterlogging. The only way to check is to remove the plant from the pot and check the roots.

And Grant wanted to know if he had discovered a new Ficus elastica sport, with a variegated plant where one stem was lacking cream variegation and just featured different shades of green. I am afraid I think this is a ‘Tineke’ cultivar that has lost its cream colouration due to reversion rather than anything ‘new’ as such, but it is still worth keeping an eye on and propagating as Grant likes it so much!

Want to ask me a question? Email ontheledgepodcast@gmail.com. The more information you can include, the better - pictures of your plant, details of your location and how long you have had the plant are always useful to help solve your issue

THIS WEEK’S SPONSOR

Thanks to True Leaf Market for sponsoring this week’s show. Download their free cover crop guide here. Get 15% off cover crop seeds at trueleafmarket.com with promo code OTL15. This discount is only available for cover crop seed products. Offer expires end of December 2022. Limit one use per customer.

HOW TO SUPPORT ON THE LEDGE

Contributions from On The Ledge listeners help to pay for all the things that have made the show possible over the last few years: equipment, travel expenses, editing, admin support and transcription.

Want to make a one-off donation? You can do that through my ko-fi.com page, or via Paypal.

Want to make a regular donation? Join the On The Ledge community on Patreon! Whether you can only spare a dollar or a pound, or want to make a bigger commitment, there’s something for you: see all the tiers and sign up for Patreon here.

  • The Crazy Plant Person tier just gives you a warm fuzzy feeling of supporting the show you love.

  • The Ledge End tier gives you access to two extra episodes a month, known as An Extra Leaf, as well as ad-free versions of the main podcast on weeks where there’s a paid advertising spot, and access to occasional patron-only Zoom sessions.

  • My Superfan tier earns you a personal greeting from me in the mail including a limited edition postcard, as well as ad-free episodes.

If you like the idea of supporting On The Ledge on a regular basis but don't know what Patreon's all about, check out the FAQ here: if you still have questions, leave a comment or email me - ontheledgepodcast@gmail.com. If you're already supporting others via Patreon, just click here to set up your rewards!

If you prefer to support the show in other ways, please do go and rate and review On The Ledge on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher or wherever you listen. It's lovely to read your kind comments, and it really helps new listeners to find the show. You can also tweet or post about the show on social media - use #OnTheLedgePodcast so I’ll pick up on it!

Cacti & succulentsJane PerroneFicus1 Comment